From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Wed Apr 03 2002 - 03:40:59 MST
On Tue, 2002-04-02 at 20:13, jeff davis wrote:
[quoting Damien Broderick]
> "Suppose I e-posted advertisements (somehow/somewhere)
> that my latest novel can be downloaded free from one
> given server, and asked for a $1 or less tip. Terrible
> idea: I need to pay for server space, and the
> inundation of hits from my zillion eager fans will
> lock up the system and send them to Piers Anthony
> paperbacks instead.
>
> So what if, instead, I use a sort of benign pyramid
> scheme:
>
> I send Eliezer, Spike and Robert an attached e-copy of
> the 85,000 word novel apiece (after politely inviting
> and receiving their request for it).
>
> Thereafter they can do what they wish with it, but I
> ask nicely that if they enjoy the book they send me a
> buck (by whatever appropriate means, maybe Paypal) AND
> THAT THEY SEND A TEASER TO ANOTHER THREE FRIENDS who
> they judge might care to read it."
>
> END OF QUOTE
Or, simply ask your readers to share the book whenever they run a
filesharing program. This eliminates your bandwidth problem, and
effectively every sharer passively recommends your book to anyone who
browses their shared files (assumes file sharing program allows browsing
a user's files, many do).
You just need a means of communicating your wishes to your users --
presumably something like a) send me a buck and b) share the book and c)
tell others nicely. You could embed this message in the book and/or in
an external metadata catalog. Probably both, as you want your user to
see your request without taking any trouble to look it up, though you
also want the user to be able to verify your request, not to mention the
book's contents, either of which could easily be tampered with.
> Anyway, I thought about Damien's above-proposed
> method, and took it a bit further. Reconfigure the
> person-to-person/reader-to-reader
> marketing/distribution mechanism by PAYING THEM. That
> is, pay a percentage to anyone who generates sales of
> your work. Say, 40 percent for all first level
> recommendations, 20 percent for second level
> recommendations, ten percent for third level, and so
> forth. If you have to market--and you do--don't shy
> away from it and don't let irrational greed mislead
> you into thinking that parsimonious is better than
> generous. You want rational greed. You need the
> right balance. The numbers here are just a
> suggestion, what you're looking for is the formula
> which gives you the maximum distribution (ie profit)
> at the minimum cost. Good old capitalism. Use the
> profit motive to set up a self-organizing, free-lance,
> self-employment, self-empowerment, be-your-own-boss,
> for-profit, intellectual property distribution system.
> I will leave it to the software people to confirm
> whether or no it is reasonable to hope for a software
> system to keep track of all the persons and
> percentages involved and collect and distribute the
> proceeds accurately. It goes without saying that we
> must have a zero-complexity, bedrock-reliable,
> ubiquitous-to-the point-of-invisibility micro payment
> system.
The only real hurdle a simple tipping system faces is adoption.
FairTunes and others have tried, but you need to be baked into a bunch
of software (e.g., media players for music) to obtain critical mass.
Technically you just need some reasonably certain method of tying a file
or files to a creator or creators (I believe FairTunes' plugin just used
filename or embedded metadata, both of which are easily subverted, but
the system could evolve to check with verifiable external metadata), and
a means of collecting payment from users and distributing payment to
creators. You don't even need a real micropayment system. Rather users
could have an account with an aggregator. Users would draw down this
account when making microdonations and the aggregator would send checks
above some amount to artists, thus cutting way down on transaction
costs. There are a few obvious options for giving the user some control
over who gets paid: a) tip a cent or whatever with each "play" (this
would be hard to do for books) or b) at the end of each month
automatically divide some preset amount the user is willing to donate
each month or c) show the user their habits and suggest a distribution,
but allow the user to alter the distribution. The last makes the user
more comfortable about trying unfamiliar art. If they don't like it,
they can cancel the donation.
However, your affiliate/MLM idea would be hard to implement. You'd have
to obtain along with the book/music/etc file a list of referrers, add
yourself to the list for anyone you share the file with, and communicate
the state of the list whenever you tip the creator of that file. This
passing of referrer information has to be supported by most of the
mechanisms files are shared by or it's basically useless. I don't see
it happening.
Another idea proposed along these lines is FairShare
http://freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/FairShare which
proposes that early donors get a cut of subsequent donations. This
seems like a better option because it rewards tipping (as opposed to
rewarding sharing, which people do without compensation -- though early
donors would also have an incentive to promote the work in order to
obtain a bigger downline) and doesn't require passing any extra bits
around.
> Here's how it came to me.
>
> I hate pop-up windows. Hate them. Wish serious harm
> to the spawn of satan responsible for this
> abomination.
>
> When a pop-up window appears on my desktop, I dash my
> cursor at light speed to the "kill the abomination"
> x-mark in the upper right hand corner of the box.
> Die! vile unbidden interruption, die! My response is
> instantaneous, reflexive, passionate, hyperbolic.
>
> Does anyone else feel this way?
I've forgotten. Haven't seen a popup in something like a year. If you
aren't using a browser that allows you to disable popups, change
browsers. I use *nix-only Galeon, though I think Mozilla now has this
feature on all platforms: <http://mozilla.org>. Although it's based on
Mozilla, you probably don't want AOL/Netscape 6.x, as I've heard that
they disable disabling popups -- unsurprising in that it's a marketing
platform for AOL.
Mike Linksvayer
http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
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